One material only.
Since 1999 we have worked AISI 316 stainless steel. Only that. It is why we know what it does when no one is watching anymore: after ten winters, twenty metres from the sea.
Two trades, one idea.
Fontealta was born in Viareggio in February 1999, from the meeting of two skills that rarely speak to each other.
On one side, taps and fittings. Andrea Farnocchia’s father had spent a lifetime there: he knew how to make water flow inside a metal body, which tolerances matter and which things break.
On the other, boatbuilding. Andrea came from studies in that field, where the first question about a material is never whether it is beautiful, but how well it resists salt.
From that meeting came a choice that seemed eccentric at the time: making high-end taps in stainless steel, instead of chrome-plated brass like everyone else.
Why AISI 316.
Two hundred metres from the sea, marine steel is not a choice. It is the only one that holds.
Between AISI 304 and AISI 316 there are a few percentage points of molybdenum. That little is what stops pitting corrosion, the kind that starts from an invisible point and spreads from there.
316 costs more and is harder to work: it slows down every stage of production. Almost no one chooses it unless they have to.
We have never used anything else. And the steel we work is exclusively of European production.
From tube to testing.
Freestanding shower columns, bathroom taps, solutions for kitchens and for yachts. Twenty collections, over five hundred articles, seven catalogue finishes and any colour on request: RAL, Pantone or NCS, even on a single piece, with no minimum order. The world’s first manufacturer of freestanding shower columns by number of models and freedom of customisation.
We design and manufacture in-house, from raw tube to hydraulic testing. The production cycle is entirely Italian: machine precision where the machine is needed, the craftsman’s hand where the machine cannot reach.
When a project asks for something that does not exist, we build it. It is a habit we have from working on megayachts, where the standard piece is almost never enough.
Why exactly here.
Viareggio is not an address. It is the reason we can do certain things.
The shipyards gave us suppliers who work steel to yacht-building standards: a flaw that would go unnoticed elsewhere is immediately flagged here, and becomes a reject.
The beach clubs and hotels of the coast are our proving ground: a shower that survives a summer on the beach has already surpassed any domestic use.
And then there is the Carnival. The floats are structures up to twenty metres tall, rebuilt from scratch every year and hand-painted in whatever shade is needed. Around them, and around the megayacht painters, Viareggio has grown a network of specialists with no equivalent in the rest of Italy.
They are the same suppliers we turn to. That is why an off-catalogue shade on a single piece is, for us, a normal request and not an exception to negotiate.
Questions first.
The product is always the same: AISI 316 stainless steel, which can be installed anywhere. The differences lie elsewhere, and there are three.
The finish, because not all of them respond the same way to the exposure and maintenance the project will be able to guarantee. The equipment, because it changes according to the system in place or the one that can be brought in. The installation, because it depends on who will use the product and how often.
These are the questions we ask before proposing anything. It is not commercial courtesy: it is how we avoid a designer finding themselves, three years after delivery, answering for a choice that could have been made better.
Our work ends when the project holds over time. Not when the order is placed.
The rest we tell in person.
Tell us about your project: from private residences to hospitality, all the way to megayachts.